“It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you get off on sometimes. What matters most is getting off. You cannot make progress without making decisions.” –- Jim Rohn, American motivational speaker.
By the time you reach management, you certainly know the consequences of paralysis analysis.
This “vapor lock” of the brain can kill a project through indecision and perfectionism as surely as pulling its funding. In fact, pulling a project’s funding represents a cleaner fate, because the project dies suddenly, rather than flopping around like a fish out of water, pretending to be viable for months or years, causing damage to the entire organization.
One of my clients, a massive consumer products organization, has a highly “collaborative” culture, which is code for taking forever to guy buy in, make a decision, and get started (already)!
Case in point: 3-D Realms, the software company that wasted 12 years and tens of millions of dollars on the sequel to the popular Duke Nukem 3-D video game before abandoning the effort. At LucasArts, a legendary gaming company that failed in April 2013, insiders report that the company fell apart because of indecision and apathy at the highest levels. Somehow, the creators of Star Wars and Indiana Jones couldn’t be bothered to produce any new games — even guaranteed bestsellers based on the aforementioned franchises — after having taking the industry by storm with its inventive new entries in the mid- to late-1980s.
At a national level, some historians have argued that government indecision nearly destroyed the United States of America during the Civil War. Given its industrial strength and population levels, the Union should have crushed the Confederacy within months.
But political infighting in the military and an unwillingness to put the best military leaders in positions of power — not to mention an understandable lack of ruthlessness in prosecuting the war — dragged things out for four painful years, resulting in the deaths of more Americans than any other war in our history.
No one wants to make the wrong decision and come off as incompetent. But to achieve anything, you have to choose a direction and move forward. If it turns out to be the wrong direction, so be it; in nearly every case, you can reverse that decision or choose a new direction.
The Board of Apple Computers fired Steve Jobs at one point, and then proceeded to nearly destroy Apple through mismanagement and bureaucratic inertia. Perhaps their greatest decision was not to fight when Steve Jobs returned and took over again in 1997, spearheading the company’s insanely profitable iMac/iPod/iPad era.
So: what should you do when faced with an uncertain decision? Follow these tips so you’re covered as best you can possibly be.
You already know that not making decisions is a no-go; even when you refuse to make a decision, you’ve made a decision. So your best option remains making a deliberate decision in such a way that minimizes the impact if it happens to be wrong.
Business will always be calculated risk, but you can cut down on that risk with the right precautions. Follow the six steps outlined above, and you’ll be well-equipped to handle the future.
This was originally published on Laura Stack’s The Productivity Pro blog.
